Thursday, September 10, 2015

Michael Barone considers
trends in crime in the wake of the "Black Lives Matter" movement and
finds a problem that should give its supporters
pause:

[T]he most important BLM demand is the first: "end
'broken windows' policing." The evidence is that this is already
happening -- at the cost of black lives.

Even The New
York Times has noticed. So far this year, murders are up 76
percent in Milwaukee, 60 percent in St. Louis, 56 percent in Baltimore
and 44 percent in Washington, D.C.

While murders are up,
arrests are down. There is, as Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac
Donald writes, a "reluctance to act (that) is affecting police
departments across the country, as virtually every tool in an
officer's tool chest -- from traffic stops to public-order maintenance
-- is vilified as racist." [format edits]

These murder
victims are disproportionately black. It is interesting to see which
"reforms" BLM wants as opposed to which would actually be
improvements. For example, not using traffic laws as excuse to steal
from random motorists would be a great start. But such a demand is
part of equality under individual rights-respecting law. Does that sound like something a group
that shouts down anyone who says "All lives matter," would concern
itself with? I don't think so. And somehow, that doesn't surprise me.